Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 08:31:40 -0400 From: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com> To: "Edward Hendrie" <edwardmh@pwaccess.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Devil Mascot Message-ID: <20040614083140.4c8c12e5.wmoran@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: <PBEKIEKOFFNDMPHOGDIJKEHFCAAA.edwardmh@pwaccess.com> References: <PBEKIEKOFFNDMPHOGDIJKEHFCAAA.edwardmh@pwaccess.com>
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"Edward Hendrie" <edwardmh@pwaccess.com> wrote: > Why do you have a Devil for a trademark mascot? From a marketing > perspective, you are shooting yourselves in the foot. There are many people > of various religious backgrounds who will be dissuaded from trying FreeBSD > because they have religious objections to a product that is promoted by a > devil. > > You may think that is a small issue, but when you are trying to create > market awareness you need a mascot that evokes simplicity and goodwill, not > one that evokes evil and deception. > > Look at how MSN is marketing its ISP. They use characters dressed in > harmless butterfly costumes. Linux, has done the same with its pudgy cute > penguin. You might want to rethink your mascot. This has come up 100000000 times. It's simply not going to happen because the beastie has too much historical significance. It's a matter of pride that the beastie mascot has more history than the Linux penguin and the Microshit butterfly put together. Besides, he wasn't designed to be "market friendly", he was designed to be a technical pun (he's not a devil, he's a daemon) There are wild, baseless predictions that the world will reject FreeBSD because of the beastie every 6 months or so. Aside from the fact that I don't believe it, it simply doesn't bear out in reality. There are more people hijacking the beastie to use as a logo for other things than I can keep track of. I've seen more renditions of the beastie in artwork than both the penguin and the butterfly combined. The simple fact is that _most_ people like the beastie, and the few who are horribly offended by it don't seem to be significant in any way. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com
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